Mariinka

“These guys shoot from here, those guys shoot from there—they never get enough.” When one of the film’s subjects says this, the borders blur; it is unclear whether she is referring to the invaders or the defenders. Filmed on 16mm over a decade, Mariinka follows young people from a city on Ukraine’s eastern front—now a crumbling ghost town. This geopolitical sundering extends beyond mere lines on a map. At the film’s heart is the story of four brothers scattered by fate: Maksim, the eldest, has been left paralyzed by an injury; Mark fights in the Ukrainian army, while his brother Ruslan has taken up arms for the Russian side. The youngest, Daniil, adopted as a toddler by a family in Mississippi, became Samuel, a teenage American gun enthusiast. Through video calls and letters, a chronicle of violence and cruelty unfolds amid a desperate hope for a reunion that seems increasingly unlikely. A sweeping and mesmerizing visual achievement, the film blends poetic realism with raw documentary footage, poignantly juxtaposing the untamed nature of the Carpathian Mountains with the billowing smoke of the Donbas.